Commonly described as interwar Hungary's great middle-class writer, Marai fled to the U.S. during the ascent of communism, and since his suicide in 1989, his work has enjoyed a mini-renaissance outside of his homeland.

During the interwar years, it would have seemed absurd to separate the two, when jazz greats like Louis Armstrong and Benny Goodman appeared on Broadway, Fats Waller and Ellington wrote extensively for the theater, and thousands of show tunes made their way into the jazz canon.

To the dissonant lives of the Mann brothers she has added the interwar wanderings of Leonard and Virginia Woolf, James and Nora Joyce, Aldous and Maria Huxley, plus a cast of peripatetic literati from Benjamin to Isherwood.